Every agent and broker would like their real estate SEO to put them at the top of the first page in Google, but if you’ve had a website for some time, you know this is not very realistic for most smaller businesses. If you develop a sound SEO strategy and pursue the hard work required to execute it, you’ll be rewarded over time with an increase in quality organic traffic for your business. Most agents and brokers don’t have the SEO expertise, content skills, or the time commitment required to develop and execute a robust SEO effort, so they hire SEO consultants and firms for help.
If you’re interested in learning about SEO strategy and what you can do to improve your SEO on your own, check out the recording of our webinar Building Your Real Estate SEO Strategy.
When you’re ready to start looking at how your IDX content can contribute to your SEO strategy, use this article as a reference for the features in your iHomefinder account that will help with your SEO goals.
Your Real Estate SEO And Your Domain
Before we get into features, it’s important to understand how our accounts allow your domain to get SEO benefit when search engines index the IDX website pages provided with your iHomefinder account. With our Version 10 release, all IDX content is embedded directly on your website, regardless of what website platform you’re using. No framing or subdomain is required, making iHomefinder the only IDX service with this very important SEO benefit.
Content
Here are the different content-related features that can be leveraged for optimization on your site:
IDX Pages
On WordPress, the permalinks (URLs), titles and metatags for the IDX pages we place directly on your domain can be optimized to include the keywords you’re targeting in your SEO strategy. Learn how >
Markets
Markets are available in all accounts and are basically a saved search you create in your IDX Control Panel, using the same property search tools that are provided on your website. You can select locations by name or draw on a map to define a Market.
After you create a Market, you can add a link in your site navigation to the page URL provided for the Market. While that is a great advantage for your SEO and your users, you’ll help your SEO a lot more by building your own custom community or neighborhood pages on your site, each optimized for your targeted keywords. These should include custom content that is unique to your site that helps visitors learn about the location and local resources. You should try to include pictures and videos where possible. Once these pages are built, you can directly embed your Markets in these pages.
Get Started
WordPress websites – Create Markets and display them on your site – Learn how >
Non-WordPress websites – Create Markets and display them on your site – Learn how >
MarketBoost
Accounts with MarketBoost will have 3 reports generated for each Market you create for your website: Market stats, open homes, and active & sold listings.
If you have an account with MarketBoost, check out our MarketBoost Quick Start Guide for instructions.
Community Pages
For WordPress sites, this feature provides a special menu item labeled Community Pages in your site navigation. It’s basically a shortcut to add basic saved searches to your website in one simple step. Instead of creating a market and manually adding a link to your navigation, you can use this feature to select basic criteria and it will create a page and automatically add a link to the Community Pages menu. For maximum flexibility, create Markets instead.
Learn how to use the Community Pages feature >
SEO City Links
For WordPress sites, this widget displays links to multiple saved searches for different cities. This provides more IDX content for search engines to discover and index.
Learn how to use the SEO City Links widget
Express Content
Regularly posting new blog articles is a must for an effective SEO strategy, yet most agents and brokers aren’t realistically able to keep up with a consistent content publishing schedule. Our Express Content account add-on publishes regular content to your blog for you. This provides search engines with a regular cadence of fresh, unique content to attract new site visitors, increase engagement on your site, and help your brand and search engine ranking over time.
Support Resources
Our support center is full of resources like our searchable Knowledge Base and training webinars to help you get the most value from your account. View the Support Center >
Learn More
If you don’t have an iHomefinder account, start your 30-day free trial, schedule a demo, or contact us today!
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